Chapter 12

sufficient rule of faith and practice.

To this he also agreed. I then asked him if he did not think that, in making up the canon, that is, in directing what books and epistles should go into it, God had reference to the wants of all coming times? He signified his assent. I then asked his attention to a few thoughts connected with that point.

"Here is the Epistle to Philemon, placed by the hand of the Holy Spirit himself in the Sacred Canon. It is on a small piece of parchment, easily lost; the wind might have blown it from Philemon's table out of the window, beyond recovery; it was not addressed to a Church, to be kept in its archives; it is a private letter, subject to every change in the condition of a private citizen. Yet, while the epistle to Laodicea, sent about the same time, is irrecoverably lost, this little writing, addressed to a private man, goes into the Bible, by direction of God!

"Do you not suppose," said I, "that God had a meaning in this beyond merely informing us how a master received a servant back to bondage?"

"What further purpose do you think there was in it?" said he.

"I only know," said I, "that slave-holding was to be a subject, as has proved to be the case, which would involve the interests of at least two of the continents of the earth, one of them being then unknown. Here the Church of God was to have large increase. Here, too, slavery was to exist, and to thrill the hearts of millions of citizens from generation to generation. It is very remarkable that one book of the Bible, which was to be made known to all nations by the commandment of the everlasting God, for the obedience of faith, should be exclusively on the subject of slavery, and that the whole burden of the Epistle should be, The Rendition of a Fugitive Slave!"

"This never occurred to me before," said Mr. North.

"Suppose," said I, "that instead of sending back Onesimus, the epistle had been a private letter from Archippus at Colosse to Paul at Rome, clandestinely aiding Onesimus to escape from Philemon, and that Paul had received Onesimus and had harbored him, and had sent him forth as a missionary, and that not one word of comment had appeared in the Bible discountenancing the act. What would have happened then?"

"Then," said Mrs. North, "one thing is certain; the business of running off slaves to Canada would now have been more brisk even than it is at present."

"Why?" said I.

"Simply because," said she, "the New Testament would have sanctioned the practice of running off slaves."

"Why, then," said I, "does it not now equally countenance the 'running' of slaves back to their masters?"

"Please answer that for me, husband," said Mrs. North.

He smiled, and rose to put some coal on the fire. We waited for his words.

"Well," said he, "I do not know but it is all right, provided the master be in each case a Philemon."

"That is a good word," said I. "You show that the Bible has an ascendency in your mind. You will be safe in following the Bible wherever it leads you, even into slave-holding, if it goes so far. But I must now question you a little. You may answer me or not, as you please.

"One day a black man appears at your door, and says, 'I have just escaped from the South. I was owned by Rev. Professor A.B. of New Orleans. I preferred liberty to slavery, and here I am.' Would you shelter him, and encourage his remaining here, and, if necessary, send him to Canada?"

"What would you have me do?" said he.

"Take him in," said I, "if you please, and give him some breakfast. You would not object to this. After breakfast you have family prayers. 'Can you read, Nesimus?' you inquire. 'O yes, master; missis and the young missises taught us all to read.' Your little boy hands him, with the rest, a Testament, and names the place of reading. Strange to say, yesterday you finished 'Titus,' and the portion to be read in course is 'Philemon!'"

"Almost a providence," said Mrs. North.

"How would you feel, Mr. North?" said I.

"Why, feel? How should I feel?" said he. "You will answer for me, perhaps, and say, 'Read Philemon; pray; and then say, Come, Nesimus, I am going to send you back to Professor A.B. I will write a letter to him, and pay your passage.'"

"What objection would you make to this?" said I.

He thought a moment, and in the meanwhile his shrewd wife said,--

"Why, husband, do you hesitate? Say this: 'What! I? and Bunker Hill within a day's march of my house, and grandfather's old sword over my library door?'"

"I am sick of hearing about Bunker Hill in this connection," said he. "Any one would think that it is one of the 'sacred mountains' in Holy Writ."

"But," said his wife, "If some of Paul's ancestors had had Bunker Hill privileges and influences, do you think Paul would have written the Epistle to Philemon? Unfortunate Apostle! Say," said his wife again, before he spoke, "that you believe in progress, that that epistle might have been right enough in its day, but that now 'we need an anti-slavery Bible and an anti-slavery God.'"

She made up a very expressive smile as she said it and stretched her work across her knee.

"Yes," said I, "the Bible is antiquated! God never gave a written revelation to be a perpetual guide to the end of time! I can supersede the Epistle to Philemon: Mrs. North, Hebrews; you, James; and another the whole of the Old Testament."

"Now," said Mr. North, "I will tell you what I have been thinking of all this time.

"I will put you into bondage in Algiers or Tunis. Somebody has bought you or captured you. But by some means you escape to me at Gibraltar. Now I will read 'Philemon' to you, and send you back to your Algerine master. What objection can you make to this, as a believer in inspiration?"

I answered, "If I were a slave in my own country, and slavery existed in Algiers, you would need to consider the relation which existed between this country and Algiers. If the governments had treaties with each other, the surrender of persons held to service in either of the countries would probably be provided for, and then you would have to consider whether you would obey what is called the 'higher law,' or yield me to the requisition of the proper authorities. This brings up the question of the rendition of fugitive slaves, which we have just considered.

"But being free in my own country, and having been, therefore, unlawfully sold into Algerine Slavery, or having been captured, or stolen, you would, I trust, make proper resistance in my behalf."

"But," said Mr. North, "The ancestors of my fugitive friend Nesimus, were taken from freedom in their own land and were reduced to slavery. Must he and his descendants be slaves forever for the sin of the original captors, or for the misfortune of his ancestors?"

"Birth in slavery long established makes all the difference in the world, Mr. North," said I. "If I am born in slavery, under a government ordaining slavery, that is a different case from that of one taken out of a passenger ship and sold as a slave."

"Then if you and your wife," said he, "were taken out of a passenger ship, and you should happen to have a child born in slavery, that child must remain a slave, even if you go free?"

"No, Sir," said I; "the child born under such circumstances is as rightfully free as its parents. But take this case: I, being captured and held as a slave, my master gives me a wife, lawfully a slave. Then, the child born of her is lawfully a slave. You see the distinction. God recognized it. The condition of both is a limitation and qualification of natural rights. So the lapse of time qualifies the right to collect debts, bring suits for libel, or slander, and for the right of way, or for the possession of land. Will we live under law? or shall each man or any set of men set up laws for their own conscience?"

"Then," said he, "If a slave-trader lands a cargo of slaves from Africa, at Florida, I have no right to buy them; they are not lawfully slaves. Is that your belief?"

"Assuredly," said I; "and if the fugitive whom I have supposed you to be sending back to the gentleman at New Orleans, were a fugitive from the cargo just imported from Africa, you would be sustained by the law of the land in delivering him from bondage; he was piratically taken; the laws would make him free, and punish his captors, if the laws were faithfully executed."

"But a poor fellow born in slavery must remain a slave!" he replied.

"He is not lawfully a slave," I said, "if his parents were both of that cargo. But if his father had received a wife from his master, then the child is lawfully a slave."

"How do you establish that distinction?" said he.

"The child is born of one known to be, herself, lawfully a slave. It is born under a constitution of government which recognizes slavery; while that government provides for slavery, the child must submit or violate an ordinance of God, unless freedom can be had by law, or by justifiable revolution."

"I feel constrained," said Mr. North "to hold that liberty is the inalienable right of every human being, except in cases of crime."

"You mean," said I, "that every human being is entitled to all the civil rights and immunities which others enjoy."

"Yes," said he, "in proportion to his age, and his capacity. Minors, and the imbecile, are entitled to protection, but may not be oppressed."

"Ah," said I, "how soon you find your general rules intercepted and qualified by circumstances. Minors, and the imbecile, then, may not be admitted to equal privileges with us. But are not all men born free and equal?"

"Now let me add to 'minors' and 'the imbecile' one more class. There are two races existing together in a certain country. One has always been, there, a servile race. The other are the lords of the soil; the institutions of the country are by their creation; they have acquired a perfect right and title to the government.

"You know, from all history, that two races never could, and never did live together on the same soil, unless they intermarried, or one was subject to the other. You admit this historical fact.

"It is proposed, now, by some, to give the subject race a right to vote and to hold office, so that their equality in all things shall be acknowledged."

"Pray," said Mr. North, "will you object to this? Has not God 'made of one blood all nations of men'?"

"Yes," I replied, "but read on, in that same verse:--'and hath determined the bounds of their habitation.' There is a law of races; races must have antipathies, unless they intermarry; he who seeks to confound them may as well labor for the conjugation of all the tribes of animals. He and his results would prove to be monsters.

"The Anglo Saxon race on this continent properly say to the Negro, 'If by conquest you get possession of the land, we must, of course, succumb to you. We are now in possession, and mean so to continue. Hard, therefore, as it seems not to let you vote in parts of the country where your numbers are such as to endanger our majority, or afford temptation to demagogues to inflame your prejudices and passions by historical appeals to them, and severe as it may seem not to let you form military companies, (which would also be mischievous in the same way) we nevertheless propose to exclude you from this right of suffrage, and from separate organizations, for our own defence, and that we may preserve our institutions for our proper descendants. We are very sorry that our English ancestors began to impose you upon us, and that Newport and Salem vessels brought so many of you here into slavery; but we cannot think of requiting you for this by jeoparding our own peace; nor would it be kind to you, as things are, to be made prominent in any way as a class. When the Northern people are, generally, your true friends, and cease to use you in an offensive manner, to excite civil war, we shall join to elevate you in every way consistent with your true interests.'

"There will be cases of extreme hardship," said I, "if a slave, fleeing from the South, however unjustifiably, nevertheless becomes surrounded here with a family, and the owner comes and claims him. There are principles of natural humanity which come into force at such a time to modify or set aside a claim. I know, indeed, that to build a valuable house on land not mine, does not vacate the land-owner's title; and, moreover, I know what may be alleged on the principle illustrated by Paley, who speaks of a man finding a stick and bestowing labor on it which is more in value than the stick itself. These cases of slaves who have gained a settlement here, call for the utmost kindness and forbearance between the sectional parties in controversy; clamor will never settle them, nor the sword; but the reign of good feeling will cause justice to flow down our streets like a river, and righteousness like an overflowing stream."

"As we have conversed a good deal upon this subject," said Mr. North, "perhaps we may bring our conversation to a close as profitably as in any other way by your telling us, summarily, what you think of this whole perplexing subject; what would you have me believe; how ought a Christian man, who desires to know and do the will of God, to feel and to act with regard to it? Good men, I see, are divided about it; I respect your motives, I approve many of your principles, I cannot object to your conclusions, in the main. Let us know what you consider to be, probably, the ultimate issue of the whole subject."

"I will do so with pleasure," said I.

"But," said Mrs. North, "let us wait till after dinner."

"As the storm is over," I said to her, "I must go home, but we will have one more council fire, if you please, and end the subject."

So in the afternoon, my kind friends gave me their attention while I made my summing up in the next and concluding chapter.